Pages

About 40 Moroccan and Jewish youth, together with family members, started to fix up the old Zeeburg Jewish cemetery in Amsterdam East this Sunday. The youth will work to thoroughly fix up the neglected cemetery over the next five Sundays, says rabbi Lody van de Kamp, co-chairman of the Jewish-Moroccan Network of Amsterdam (JMNA).

A Moroccan social worker from the Connect foundation in Amsterdam West heard how badly the cemetery had fallen into disrepair and offered the rabbi to help out.

The Zeeburg cemetery is one of the biggest Jewish cemeteries in Western Europe, and is today a jumble of old tombstones overgrown with weeds.

The JMNA was founded in 2006 by representatives of the Moroccan and Jewish communities in order to have better understanding for each other, after several antisemitic incidents in the capital.

Rabbi Van de Kamp praised Said Bensalem for his initiative to jointly clean up the cemetery, and said the initiative makes him a 'a model of solidarity, an example for everybody'. 100 Moroccan and Jewish youth are expected to be involved in the project.